Lift the Sword Kitty, Bane's Coming
This morning I took three hours to get myself ready for the kung-fu class I love. I then spent another 45 minutes in tears when I couldn't make it out of the house.
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I remember this game or trick that we used to do when I was kid. Lots of people have tried it. You sit down on a chair, usually upright with your back straight. Someone stands basically right in front of your face and puts the point of a single finger into the middle of your forehead. And then you try to get up.
Now the real truth is that the "trick" or whatever it is requires quite a few factors to work. There's a combination of angle and force and basically you have to agree to only try and get straight up using only your legs.
In a perfect vacuum, or at least in theory, when the person exerts minimal force on your head, you can't get up. With one finger touching your forehead, barely putting any pressure at all, you can't get off the chair. You can try all you want. Ain't gonna happen.
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Back in the 80's Kitty Pryde just happened to come across her father trapped in a shady and dangerous deal with the Marvel Comics Yakuza.
(Of course one of the few bigger name Jewish superheroes would be the one to have the father making the shady deal. The goy Jean Grey clan never had this problem.)
So Kitty followed and stowed herself away in hopes of doing something right somehow. Only young Kitty didn't know that the Marvel Comics Yakuza had within their ranks an ancient, evil assassin who loves to find and train exclusive proteges who will then turn and fight him. He had tried that once already with Wolverine, which actually helped because when Kitty's problems reached the X-mansion of course ole Logan would be the one to just happen to be there to answer the call. Had her father dealt with evil Marvel Russian Mafia I guess Colossus would have answered the phone.
Long digression short (or at least in the middle), Kitty gets captured and rewarded for her capture by being trained to become a deadly, brainwashed demon ninja with all the mad skills that come with it.
(Tangential geek digression: I never understood why they sort of stuck with those skills for a bit, during the sillier Shadowcat stuff sometimes, but then it all just faded away. Maybe she just needs regression therapy to unlock it all again.)
Wolverine heads to Japan and finds her right when she guts him but good. Don't worry though, she's well enough to realize her deed so that we can have the important deprogramming sequence that in comics thank God doesn't come with montage music.
To prove that Kitty no longer had any Marvel Comics Yakuza Demon Ninja brainwash in her Wolverine hands her a sword. While both kneel on a tatami mat he tells her to hold up the sword. That's it.
Use two hands, extend your arms out and hold the sword as long as you can.
Simple right? Only it isn't. She tries and tries and tries and fails and fails and fails. But then we get our two favorite plot devices, MacGuffin and Epiphany, and the truth hits.
Just lift the sword.
Next morning Wolverine wakes up and sees her still on the mat holding up the sword. He lets her hold it until she's ready to put it down.
She did it.
She lifted the sword.
Because that's all she had to do, right? Just lift the sword.
I read Kitty Pryde and Wolverine in middle school. I had a strong relationship with comic books at that time.
I loved them and still do. I needed them and still do.
When I finished that series I remember feeling sunk. As I did the hundreds of times I'd read it again.
My love of the X-men won out. My need for the X-men (and Teen Titans) and something other than the real world won out. But every time I read that story, every time I think about it today, one thought wakes up and stabs me in the spleen with the truth.
I'd never lift that fucking sword.
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I call it my bane. I have for years. When I say that I mean the dictionary definition. But then again Bane himself wouldn't be such a bad metaphor. After all, he broke fucking Batman's back.
The online community for those who suffer mental illness grows everyday. It's wonderful. Depression. Anxiety. ADHD. Bipolar. Stories and support and community. When you're alone in the pit with the henchmen rolling the boulder over the top it helps to know that you're actually not alone.
I read the stories. I listen to the chats and I feel that communion that comes from sharing a common misery.
But no one talks about Bane. Well, they sort of do. They talk ADHD. They talk about tasks. They talk about difficulties. They talk about the struggles and the overcoming and the meds and the people.
Only it never sounds exactly like Bane.
Maybe he's just a little different with them. Maybe he's regular Bane, incredibly strong, fast and skilled. A master tactician whose intelligence gets underestimated. That Bane's bad. Real bad.
My Bane carries an unlimited supply of venom just for me. That's when he plugs in the tubes and levels up his strength to ton-lifted capacity just so that he can get to work on me.
He has this torture he's created. It's simple really.
I sit down on a chair and he puts the tip of his finger in the middle of my forehead.
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The worst part has never been the not doing. That's just a regular shitty part which gets to rhinoceros sized logs when, like kung-fu, it's something I really enjoy.
But that's not the problem. I'm fine with Bane pushing my forehead or even sitting and farting on me. Well, that's not true. I fucking hate Bane doing that. It crushes me in so many ways.
But I told you, Bane is a master tactician. And he's figured out the right person to do the best job of really hurting me.
Me.
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As the tears splotched dark circles on the 100 year old hardwood I mumbled to myself.
I got up early. I ate. I took the meds. I got dressed for it. I meditated when I started to feel Bane breaking in with his bazooka.
But I couldn't go.
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There are two components to ADHD, inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity. And while I have the second part, mostly the impulsivity, it's the first one that drives my life.
NOTE: This is NOT a good explanation of ADHD. This is my narrative/explanation. For a real explanation you're better off with official, accurate sources.
My mind can wander of course. And I can have the forgetfulness as well as any. But that's not inattention for me.
I guess to get to my inattention I have to give you my view of ADHD (I took the heart of this explanation from a source I once found online but I can't seem to find the link that should be posted for it. Hopefully I'll find it and give credit where do).
We have neurons, our brain cells. Each cell is separate yet tied to one another along pathways. We need those cells to be connected and talking to each other.
To talk to each other we need neurotransmitters. These chemicals play the part of messenger. Turns out these messengers are way more important than you think. If your brain runs a good Postal Office with good pay and benefits you end up with a good sized neurotransmitter pool to get those message everywhere they need to be.
Robert Reich, professor and economist, explains how in the late 70s and early 80s the course of our corporate landscape and how it worked started getting fucked over by a new type of robber baron asshole: the corporate raider (long-winded, accurate enough metaphor, not a digression, just stick with me here). And they did just what you're thinking. They bought shit up and did what they could to drive up share prices and then they sold it all so they could punch Charlie Sheen and fuck Julia Roberts.
But Reich doesn't know the dark secret kept only in the recesses of mine and maybe a few other Gen X brains. At the very same time during the late 70's and 80's we also got the rise of the neurotransmitter raiders.
The bastards, similar to their corporate brothers, simply went for the neurotransmitters in kids' brains. They may not have fucked Julia Roberts but, let me tell you, lots of kids got fucked.
I am one of those children.
And so the raiders depleted my neurotransmitters, making it sometimes damn near impossible for any messages to arrive.
Our brains, like teenagers with texting plans from the gods, send lots of messages. My brain's got factories and factories lined up firing off messages after messages after messages, a thought assembly line with the flow of Niagara Falls. When the raiders got through with my brain, the thought factories lost their foundation and turned into great halls of Shakespeare writing monkeys.
The messages float in the ether of my mind. I write a message like, "I'm going to kung-fu today." The writer did their part. I'm going to kung-fu. But without a messenger doing their job, the message never gets to the doing part of the brain.
Now that doesn't mean the message disappears. It doesn't. I know that because another part of my brain, the conscious personality part, just keeps fucking reading the message to the rest of us over and over and over again.
I'm going to kung-fu today. I'm going to kung-fu today. I'm going to kung-fu today.
And while that simpleton shouts on repeat, the monkeys decide to turn the anarchy up to "Gremlins watching Snow White", the action part gets bored and plays with its privates and Bain laughs standing over me, his finger on my head and his smelly crotch in my face.
That's how I end up at 11:40 tearing up because I can't make it to a 12 o'clock class just a mile away.
Or why I couldn't finish my homework just about ever during the first 8 grades of my life.
Or how I got either fired or forced out of my last two jobs.
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Let's conduct an experiment. For this experiment you'll need your TV, your remote control, a couch and an open mind.
Make sure the TV is off. Then grab your remote control. Put it in your favored remote control hand.
Go over to the couch and sit down. Keep the remote in your hand and place the hand in your lap so that you can see it at all time.
Now start repeating to yourself over and over again, "I want to watch TV. I want to watch TV. I want to watch TV..." Don't stop repeating. You have to keep that going.
Play with volume. Sometimes whisper it to yourself. Sometimes scream it with all you've got. Make sure you stare at the remote just about every other time you say that.
But never, ever, turn on the fucking TV.
Pretty stupid right? I mean how hard can it be to turn on a damned TV when you got the remote right there in your hand.
That's what I tell myself too. Have been for over 35 years. At the exact same time I'm still telling myself I want to watch TV. That part gets to be a duet in the stage of my mind.
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When I was a kid I didn't understand. No one did. Many or most still don't. Try that one with your teachers, your boss or the person you live with.
Go on. Say it.
I just can't.
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I didn't make it to kung-fu today. I'll be trying Friday.
Hopefully I lift that sword.
And then cut Bane's balls off with it.
